Mystique of Bal Thackeray & problems his heirs will have to face

Mumbai’s Marathi-speaking poor loved Bal Thackeray. And his xenophobia was unmistakably a part of his championing their cause. But his message grew inconsistent over the years, a problem that his heirs apparent, who lack his charisma, will have to grapple with.

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By: Patrick French

Bal Thackeray was always easy to caricature, because he caricatured himself — leering quizzically at us from in front of a photo of a tiger, posing theatrically in saffron beside a famous visitor, or gesturing ostentatiously from a carved throne. From the start of his political career, when he drew cartoons for the Free Press Journal in a booth alongside the young RK Laxman, he showed an ability to mix the comic with the cruel.

When he wanted to challenge the presence of south Indian migrants in the city then called Bombay in the 1960s, it was not enough to make an economic case in defence of the Marathi manoos: he had to dismiss his enemies as "lungiwaale". At times of tension, he exaggerated his targets into a distorted version of themselves: Muslims were slandered as "fanatics" and "sinners" who were "spreading like a cancer and should be operated on like a cancer"; Sonia Gandhi became a "white skin" who was not welcome in India; the media were referred to as "pimps and agents".

ET Special: Bal Thackeray's life and times from Times of India archives For his natural supporters in Maharashtra, this flamboyance mixed with menace was always part of the appeal of Bal Thackeray. He said things that other politicians did not dare to say in public. His aggressive statements made him sound like a man who would get things done and, at a local level, it was a genuine ability to translate bragging into action that was at the base of the Shiv Sena's early success.

Reports about Thackeray by foreign correspondents or journalists from other parts of India often missed the extent of his party's organisation, and the popularity he gained from seeming to represent the poor of the industrial city.

Two years ago in Mumbai, when Thackeray's star appeared to be waning, I was struck by the staunch support for the Shiv Sena among the white-capped dabbawallahs. Stacking their wooden carts with tiffin boxes with their customary rapid efficiency, this community of Hindu Marathas declared itself to be rock solid in its loyalty to Balasaheb, the man who stood for the rights of indigenous Marathi speakers, and paraded in the semi-mythical footsteps of Chhatrapati Shivaji, the 17th century king who had once defeated the Mughals.

Writing in 1975, less than 10 years after Thackeray founded the Shiv Sena, VS Naipaul caught something of this devotion. The Shiv Sena barely featured on the electoral map at that time, but was making a name for itself at ground level in the city's chawls. In a squatter's settlement, Shiv Sena committees had organised washing and bathing facilities. "The middle-class leadership of the Sena might talk of martial glory," wrote Naipaul. "But at this lower and more desperate level the Sena had become something else: a yearning for community, an ideal of self-help, men rejecting rejection."

That sense of community and belonging was both a positive and a negative passion. In the aftermath of the 1992-93 Bombay riots, I found the Shiv Sena committees to be better organised and more frightening than they had been in earlier times. In Mahim, it was impossible to speak to any Muslim resident without a Sena representative appearing and pushing up close, making it clear the conversation should stop.

The xenophobic aspect of Bal Thackeray's vision was not subsidiary to his party's identity: it was central to the political message. When I interviewed Shiv Sena activists and editorial staff from the party mouthpiece Saamana in 1996, it was notable that without exception they saw themselves as a persecuted majority. They announced that everyone was scheming against them, particularly Muslims, who were depicted as arrogant mischief makers: this minority should go to Pakistan, they said, or more mosques might need to be smashed.

As for Balasaheb, "the nicest man," in the words of the paper's commercial editor, he was merely defending Marathi speakers from outside forces. "He admires Hitler because he worked hard and because you need one dictator at the head of each party, rather than changing your ideology all the time. You need one king, and that is what the Shiv Sena has. Just because Hitler was defeated, after all, we should not say that he was 100 percent bad."

Down the years, Bal Thackeray's message was not notably consistent. His father Keshav has been a campaigner against upper-caste domination, and although the son paid lip service to the same idea, the OBC politician Chhagan Bhujbal broke with the party in 1991 over the boss's apparent anti-Dalit views and his opposition to the Mandal commission report.

Thackeray scoffed at dynastic politics, but the party was controlled by his own family members. He encouraged his grandson Aditya — a student of the prestigious English-medium school Bombay Scottish — to head the youth wing, the Yuva Sena, and even presented him with a curved sword during a rally at Shivaji Park. A fierce opponent of Valentine's Day cards and debauched "foreign culture", Bal Thackeray nevertheless happily embraced the decadent Michael Jackson when his nephew Raj arranged a concert in Mumbai.

His ideological message was subsidiary to his method of operation: providing he could run the city by remote control, and receive the homage of politicians and glamourous movie stars, he was content. Bal Thackeray remained a parochial figure. Unlike Narendra Modi, he never appealed to those outside his own immediate world; he had less sophisticated followers.

Whether his feuding successors Uddhav and Raj will manage to continue his street-level magic looks doubtful. Although the Shiv Sena remains a formidable political force, it will no longer have its guide and founder. Bal Thackeray loved to play the role of the city's beneficent godfather, garlanded with a fat-beaded mala. While his son and nephew might inspire fear, they lack the old man's charisma. For Marathi-speaking strivers, it is Balasaheb who remains the hero.

(Patrick French is the author of India: A Portrait, Liberty or Death, and VS Naipaul's biography The World is What It Is)